Environmental Anthropology by Kopnina, Helen; Shoreman-Ouimet, Eleanor;

Short description:

This volume focuses on the future of environmental anthropology, gathering both established academics and newcomers to discuss the methodological and theoretical themes of future research and outline new theoretical approaches. It explores topics ranging from migration to climate change, food insecurity, indigenous knowledge, the relation between information technology and ecology, and research methods that will soon characterize the field.

Long description:

This volume presents new theoretical approaches, methodologies, subject pools, and topics in the field of environmental anthropology. Environmental anthropologists are increasingly focusing on self-reflection - not just on themselves and their impacts on environmental research, but also on the reflexive qualities of their subjects, and the extent to which these individuals are questioning their own environmental behavior. Here, contributors confront the very notion of "natural resources" in granting non-human species their subjectivity and arguing for deeper understanding of "nature," and "wilderness" beyond the label of "ecosystem services." By engaging in interdisciplinary efforts, these anthropologists present new ways for their colleagues, subjects, peers and communities to understand the causes of, and alternatives to environmental destruction. This book demonstrates that environmental anthropology has moved beyond the construction of rural, small group theory, entering into a mode of solution-based methodologies and interdisciplinary theories for understanding human-environmental interactions. It is focused on post-rural existence, health and environmental risk assessment, on the realm of alternative actions, and emphasizes the necessary steps towards preventing environmental crisis.

"This edited volume lives up to its name.  It includes 12 essays and studies, ranging from ethnography that goes in new directions (urban residents, water pollution) to highly innovative and important theoretical pieces. Summing Up: Highly recommended."

– E. N. Anderson, emeritus, University of California, Riverside, in CHOICE

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Environmental Anthropology of Today and Tomorrow  Helen Kopnina and Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet  Pathways: Reflections on the Self and Society  1. The Mundane Bicycle and the Environmental Virtues of Sustainable Urban Mobility  Luis A. Vivanco  2. Requiem for Roadkill: Death and Denial on America’s Roads  Jane Desmond  3. The Future of Environmental Anthropology: Bringing Smallholder Agriculture Research to the City  Shiloh Moates  4. Future Directions in Environmental Anthropology: Incorporating Ethnography of Environmental Education  Helen Kopnina  Health, Risk Assessment and Prediction  5. Eco-Myopia Meets the Longue Durée: An Information Ecology of the Increasingly Arid Southwestern U.S.A.  David Casagrande and Charles Peters  6. Sedna's Children: Inuit Elders' Perceptions of Climate Change and Food Security  Ann McElroy  7. Water Wary: Understandings and Concerns about Water and Health among the Rural Poor of Louisiana  Merrill Singer and Jacqueline M. Evans  8. Environmental Migration: The Future of Anthropology in Social Vulnerability, Disaster, and Discourse  Elizabeth Marino  Solutions-Based Research, Alternative Methodologies and Lifeways  9. Causal Explanation for Environmental Anthropologists  Andrew P. Vayda  10. Possibilities for a Bioregional Anthropology  Joshua Lockyer  11. Anthropologies of the Future: On the Social Performativity of (Climate) Forecasts  Renzo Taddei  12. Anthropology and Environmental Policy: Joint Solutions for Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods  Susan Charnley and William H. Durham